Nonionic surfactant-stabilised oil-in-water emulsions offer a potentially useful vehicle for transporting heavy crude oils from oilfields to refineries or distribution terminals. Prior to refining, separation of the oil from the emulsion is necessary. Previous studies have suggested that heating the emulsion is sufficient for destabilisation and recovery of the oil. The present work examines th...

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) catastrophe had considerable impact on the ∼ 50 km long sandy beach system located along the Alabama shoreline. We present a four-year dataset to characterize the temporal evolution of various polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their alkylated homologs trapped in the residual oil buried along the shoreline. Field samples analyzed include the first arriv...

For a rolling piston type of rotary compressor, oil supply system consisting of individual lubrication elements such as pumps, oil passages, and sliding surfaces has been modeled by employing equivalent electric circuit. Numerical solutions of the oil network model include total oil flow rate into the shaft hole, oil flow rates to various sliding surfaces, and oil leaks through roller end clear...

Thrust bearings play a vital role in propulsion systems. They rely on a thin layer of oil being trapped between rotating surfaces to produce a low friction interface. The "quality" of this bearing affects many things from noise transmission to the ultimate catastrophic failure of the bearing itself. As a result, the direct measure of the forces and vibrations within the oil filled interface wou...

In this study, nanoparticle stabilized foam experiments were performed in bulk tests, micromodels, and sandpacks at elevated temperatures and pressures to investigate the flow behavior and displacement mechanisms for enhanced heavy oil recovery. The results from the bulk tests showed that the stability of the foam and oil in water (O/W) emulsion improved when silica nanoparticles (SiO2) were ad...

In laboratory sandpack tests for heavy oil recovery by alkaline flooding, it was found that wettability alteration of the sand had a significant impact on oil recovery. In this work, a heavy oil of 14 API was used to examine the effect of organic acids in the oil and water chemistry on wettability alteration. From interfacial tension measurements and sand surface composition analysis, it was c...

Borehole magnetic resonance (MR) is routinely used to estimate the viscosity of light oil, even when it is mixed with water in the pore space of reservoir rock. However light oil methods are inadequate when oil viscosity is above several thousand mPa-s. There have been a number of publications relating magnetic resonance measurements to heavy oil viscosity, but the correlations proposed have no...

The acute toxic effect of different crude oils (heavy crude oil and bonny light crude oil) on embryos of marine medaka Oryzias melastigma was measured and evaluated by exposure to the water-accommodated fraction (WAF) in the present study. The cardiac function of medaka embryos was used as target organ of ecotoxicological effect induced by oil exposure. Results showed that the developing marine...

Five years after the 1997 Nakhodka oil spill in the Sea of Japan, seven bacterial strains capable of utilizing the heavy oil spilled from the Nakhodka Russian oil tanker were isolated from three coastal areas (namely Katano Seashore of Fukui Prefecture, Osawa and Atake seashores of Ishikawa Prefecture) and the Nakhodka Russian oil tanker after a 5-year bioremediation process. All bacterial stra...